Biology subjects

Engelmann, J. B.

Publications and source records attributed to Engelmann, J. B..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

The impact of incidental anxiety on the neural signature of mentalizing

While the effects of anxiety on various cognitive processes, including memory, attention, and learning, have been relatively well documented, the neurobiological effects of anxiety on social cognitive processes remain largely unknown. We address this gap using threat-of-shock to induce incidental anxiety while participants performed two false-belief tasks, a standard and an economic-games version. During belief formation and belief inferences, regions in a canonical social cognition network showed activation reflecting mentalizing, including the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), precuneus, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). At the same time, we found threat-related suppression of social cognition regions during belief inferences. A conjunction analysis confirmed that a network of regions was simultaneously engaged during mentalizing and suppressed by anxiety: bilateral TPJ, bilateral IFG, and putamen. We examined how threat impacted the connectivity between seed regions from the conjunction analyses and its targets. During belief formation, we found that anxiety suppressed the connectivity between the precuneus seed and two key mentalizing nodes, the dmPFC and right TPJ. Moreover, during belief inferences threat specificallty suppressed belief-based connectivity between putamen and its targets in IPS and dlPFC, and dispositional distress significantly modulated threat-related suppression of connectivity between the left TPJ seed and left IPS. Our results highlight important effects of incidental and dispositional anxiety on specific nodes of the social cognition network. Taken together, our study uncovers novel interactions between the reward, social cognition, and attentional systems, indicating that social cognitive processes rely on support from other large-scale networks, and that these network interactions are disrupted under incidental anxiety.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Mentalizing in economic games is associated with enhanced activation and connectivity in left temporoparietal junction

Studies in Social Neuroeconomics have consistently reported activation in social cognition regions during interactive economic games suggesting mentalizing during economic choice. It remains important to test the involvement of neural activity associated with mentalizing in an economic games context within the same sample of participants performing the same task. We designed a novel version of the classic false-belief task in which participants observed interactions between agents in the ultimatum and trust games and were subsequently asked to infer the agents beliefs. We compared activation patterns during the economic-games false-belief task to those during the classic false-belief task using conjunction analyses. We find significant overlap in left TPJ, and dmPFC, as well as temporal pole during two task phases: belief formation and belief inference. Moreover, gPPI analyses show that during belief formation right TPJ is a target of both left TPJ and right temporal pole (TP) seed regions, while during belief inferences all seed regions show interconnectivity with each other. These results indicate that across different task types and phases, mentalizing is associated with activation and connectivity across central nodes of the social cognition network. Importantly, this is the case in the context of the novel economic-games and classic false-belief tasks.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Decreased confidence in loss-avoidance contexts is a primary meta-cognitive bias of human reinforcement learning

In simple instrumental-learning tasks, humans learn to seek gains and to avoid losses equally well. Yet, two effects of valence are observed. First, decisions in loss-contexts are slower, which is consistent with the Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) hypothesis. Second, loss contexts decrease individuals confidence in their choices - a bias akin to a Pavlovian-to-metacognitive transfer (PMT). Whether these two effects are two manifestations of a single mechanism or whether they can be partially dissociated is unknown. Here, across six experiments, we attempted to disrupt the PIT effects by manipulating the mapping between decisions and actions and imposing constraints on response times (RTs). Our goal was to assess the presence of the metacognitive bias in the absence of the RT bias. Were observed both PIT and PMT despite our disruption attempts, establishing that the effects of valence on motor and metacognitive responses are very robust and replicable. Nonetheless, within- and between-individual inferences reveal that the confidence bias resists the disruption of the RT bias. Therefore, although concomitant in most cases, PMT and PIT seem to be - partly - dissociable. These results highlight new important mechanistic constraints that should be incorporated in learning models to jointly explain choice, reaction times and confidence.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Contextual influence on confidence judgments in human reinforcement learning.

The ability to correctly estimate the probability of ones choices being correct is fundamental to optimally re-evaluate previous choices or to arbitrate between different decision strategies. Experimental evidence nonetheless suggests that this metacognitive process -referred to as a confidence judgment-is susceptible to numerous biases. We investigate the effect of outcome valence (gains or losses) on confidence while participants learned stimulus-outcome associations by trial-and-error. In two experiments, we demonstrate that participants are more confident in their choices when learning to seek gains compared to avoiding losses. Importantly, these differences in confidence were observed despite objectively equal choice difficulty and similar observed performance between those two contexts. Using computational modelling, we show that this bias is driven by the context-value, a dynamically updated estimate of the average expected-value of choice options that has previously been demonstrated to be necessary to explain equal performance in the gain and loss domain. The biasing effect of context-value on confidence, also recently observed in the context of incentivized perceptual decision-making, is therefore domain-general, with likely important functional consequences.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

The Neural Circuitry Of Emotion-Induced Distortions Of Trust

Aversive emotions are likely to be a key source of irrational human decision-making but still little is known about the underlying neural circuitry. Here, we show that aversive emotions distort trust decisions and cause significant changes in the associated neural circuitry. They reduce trust and suppress trust-specific activity in left temporoparietal junction (TPJ). In addition, aversive emotions reduce the functional connectivity between TPJ and emotion-related regions such as the amygdala. We also find that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) plays a key role in mediating the impact of aversive emotions on brain-behavior relationships. Functional connectivity of right pSTS with left TPJ not only predicts mean trust taking in the absence of negative emotions, but aversive emotions also largely remove this association between TPJ-pSTS connectivity and behavioral trust. These findings may be useful for a better understanding of the neural circuitry of affective distortions and may thus help identify the neural bases of psychiatric diseases that are associated with emotion-related psychological and behavioral dysfunctions.

neuroscience↗